Thursday, August 25, 2016

There is also Swedish television coverage - however this coverage will be entirely in Swedish, and is likely only available to those in Sweden or those who can circumvent the regional restriction.SVT Long distance.

As I write this, the athletes running the long distance are heading into quarantine and there is a moment of calm before the actual race begins. The weather is pretty miserable for spectators but should make for nice cool conditions for our intrepid orienteers.

For team USA, Alex Jospe will be the first out on the course. She has blogged about her WOC experience so far on her personal blog which you can find here . To quote from her write-up:

"My plan is again to focus on the navigation - Take the good micro-routes and choose the right macro-routes, dance across those open rocks and tumble across the cliffs like I have wings on my Inov-8s. Today, there is nothing I would rather be doing, and no place I'd rather be doing it! No matter how I finish in the results, I want to finish knowing that I ran a good race, proud of my effort and my navigation."

The next American in the forest will be Samantha Saeger. Sam lives in Uppsala, Sweden and has been looking to this race for a long time. She raced the middle distance on Tuesday, and bashed her knee into a rock during the race. The swelling was causing a bit of pain and discomfort during her training yesterday, but this morning she reports that the knee feels much better and at least this observer could not see any overt limping :) Go get 'em Sam!

For the men, Eric Bone will be running. At 11:50, he has just departed for the quarantine zone, with mere minutes to spare before the 12:00 deadline. As longtime followers will appreciate, this is a sign that Eric is right on schedule. This is not his first rodeo, and he thrives on getting to the start with minimal standing around time.

As a preview of what the map and terrain might hold, I will leave you with a map from our training session yesterday. The GPS track belongs to yours truly, team member Ross Smith.